According to the latest research by market research firm Dell’Oro Group, the global macro station radio access network (RAN) market continued to show a stable trend in the third quarter after two years of sharp decline. However, Stefan Pongratz, Vice President of the research company, stated that they expect the market to show flat growth throughout 2025.

Research has found that market concentration has further increased, with the top five suppliers holding 96% of the market share so far this year. These top suppliers include Huawei, Ericsson, Nokia, ZTE, and Samsung. Dell’Oro analysts revealed to Fierce that the top two suppliers are particularly strengthening their control over the market.

“Huawei and Ericsson are clearly the world’s first and second largest manufacturers – they together hold nearly two-thirds of the RAN market share,” Pongratz said. The research organization pointed out that in the first three quarters of 2025, Huawei and Ericsson’s global RAN revenue share will increase.

Huawei adopts a semi annual reporting system instead of quarterly reporting, and the company’s profit for the first half of 2025 decreased by 32% to $5.17 billion. Ericsson achieved a net profit of approximately $924 million during the same six-month period. However, in the third quarter, Ericsson’s net profit jumped to just over $1.1 billion, doubling from the same period last year.

Dell’Oro also pointed out that compared to 2024, Huawei and Nokia will increase their RAN revenue share outside of North America during 2025. In the third quarter, the growth in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa was almost enough to offset the revenue decline in North America and the Asia Pacific region.

“Although expectations for RAN remain low in the short term, some leading RAN vendors remain cautiously optimistic that more investment is needed in the long run to ensure the network evolves from a connected pipeline to an intelligent grid,” Pongratz added in the statement.

This may mean that RAN sales will not significantly increase until the deployment of 6G radio equipment begins at the end of 2028 or 2029, and 6G is expected to be commercially available by 2030. 5G Advanced does not require large-scale RAN updates as it is primarily achieved through software upgrades.